Hardware News and Reviews

[H]ardOCP have an interesting article on how your PSU may impact your overclocking efforts:

Ripple/noise have what I would call a moderate amount of impact on overclocking per se in the short term unless the values are massively out of specification. However, the closer you are to a clean output the less work that is done by the downstream VRMs, MOSFETs, and capacitors. Less work means the less wear, the less heat, etc. that these components experience. The less heat these downstream components experience, the less heat you have to manage in the system, which calculates to longer component lifespan. The longer you are able to push the boundaries of those components (potentially) before you cross that line where those fail or the effects of those stressed components on a GPU or CPU of increased voltage to those components to overcome the increased resistance (it is somewhat of a viscous circle) that causes heat problems in the CPU/GPU itself. That all said, in reality, the ripple/noise values are more a long term damage issue due to the better quality motherboards these days. (This is of course subjective depending on how "long," "long term" is, but not in the few minutes you are trying to hit some peak OC then back off to a lower value.) But your poor hard drives....oh the data!

PCGameWare review the BitFenix Phenom MITX Case, which looks like it would be ideal for a HTPC or NAS:

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There’s really not much to see at the front of the Phenom MITX, but what you can do is admire the gentle curves both top and bottom (with its signature being the top curve is smaller than the bottom, which always looks kind of odd, but cool nonetheless!). We can also stroke the front panel and appreciate BitFenix’s SofTouch™ Surface Treatment, but as you can see it’s a bit of a finger print magnet unfortunately. At the bottom there’s a simple glossy black BitFenix logo, it’s minimalistic, but that’s part of the charm I think.

Today we have the Gainward Phantom GLH (Goes Like Hell) Edition GeForce GTX 960 2GB; a bit of a mouthful if I must say so myself. Gainward aren’t renowned for breaking overclocking world records, but they know a thing or two about producing high quality, super quiet cooling solutions with a quirky difference. Gainward has worked their magic by cherry picking specific cards that can handle and maintain their intense factory overclocks. NVIDIA has aimed this card at the core gaming market, hoping for those who admitted to using older technology during Steams survey will want to upgrade to the new Maxwell architecture thanks to its low price.

HardOCP review the EVGA 430W Power Supply, an entry level PSU from a company that has a mixed record for producing power supplies:

Today’s EVGA 430W is the fifth power supply we have reviewed from EVGA. While previously the 500B was the smallest capacity power supply that EVGA offered, today's EVGA 430W is smaller than that unit. As the EVGA 430W is also related to the 500B, we already have some idea of what to expect from this unit. As before with the EVGA 500B, this will require us to readjust our expectations a bit since this unit is a very entry level product which is a category literally defined by compromises and this has been a brutal category of late. That said, we won't change our requirements (based on ATX12V specifications) for this unit to pass our testing today. So, before moving on, what does EVGA have to say about this product?

Think Computers check out the NZXT DOKO PC Streaming Device, a competitor to the likes of Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV:

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NZXT is a company that we typically know for their PC cases and cooling devices. They have made a great name for themselves in these markets. Well at CES this year they announced a new product that brings them to a brand new market. The product is called DOKO and it is a PC streaming device. PC streaming and streaming services have become extremely popular over the past few years. It seems everyone is coming out with a streaming box or device. We know NZXT puts great quality into their cases so we hope they can bring that to the DOKO. The DOKO is also strictly a streaming device, you cannot load apps on it or does not come with pre-loaded apps. The DOKO does have some very unique features and we think that is what sets it apart from other streaming devices out there. Will this device become a staple in our home theater setup? Read on as we find out!

Tech Report have a roundup of five overclocked GTX 960 graphics cards:

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As a reviewer, though, these cards present me with a real problem: they're too darned good. In the past, five different video cards based on the same GPU might perform about the same, but the cooling solutions and such would give me something to talk about, something to compare. When I tested this group of GTX 960s, though, they were all so quiet, they didn't exceed the noise floor of my tranquil basement lab—not even under full load running Crysis 3.

Hexus review the MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard, which makes use of the AMD's 970 chipset:

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AMD's AM3+ socket and associated chipsets have been on the market since 2011, which is a long time in the fast-moving world of desktop PC technology. The age of AM3+ poses a challenge for consumers looking to get the best value for money in their next build. AMD's CPUs may be hitting the right notes on price to performance but the rather dated selection of AM3+ motherboards are less compelling, pushing a lot of consumers towards Intel's newer Z97 platform that's flooded with choice.

Big Bruin have a review of the Tesoro Gandiva H1L, a laser gaming mouse from a relatively new peripherals company based in the USA:

Tesoro is a fairly young computer peripherals manufacturer based in the USA that was launched by a group of gaming enthusiasts in 2011. While we have not yet reviewed any of their products, we had our first introduction to them when they generously offered to sponsor a week in the 2014 Bigbruin.com Pro Football Pick 'Em. They sent over a Shrike H2L laser gaming mouse and an Ancile Z1 hard gaming mouse pad for that affair, and this time around we have another one of their gaming mice.

Nikk Tech check out the Razer BlackWidow Chroma, a mechanical keyboard designed for gamers:

Compared to the Blackwidow Ultimate mechanical gaming keyboard which we had with us a long time ago the new Blackwidow Chroma has two very noticeable differences which I’m sure many gamers have been looking forward to. First it features full RGB (16.8m colors) individual key illumination and uses the brand new Green mechanical switches manufactured by Razer themselves. Now i realize that we all respect Cherry MX since they are the first and leading manufacturer when it comes to mechanical switches but Razer has done a great job producing their own alternative since their Green switches are not only just as durable (60 million keystrokes) but they require similar actuation force (50g) as the Cherry MX switches (identical to the Cherry MX Blue switches actually) but with shorter actuation points (faster typing). However although on paper everything looks great that might not be the case so let's see what Razer has been up to lately.

From a stock performance point of view the card not only performed well but was also quiet, remaining at approximately 35db during Gaming and Testing. Turning the fans to full though increases noise significantly, but also cools the card by an addition 15+ degrees! This helped keep artifacting to a minimum while overclocking. The Zotac GEFORCE GTX 970 was found to be capable of running with an additional 225MHz added to the Core Clock and an additional 250MHz added to the Memory Clock, the end result was a 14% increase in overall performance in the Unigine Heaven test. Of course in the overclocked test the fans were set to 100%, meaning the Zotac GEFORCE GTX 970 was kicking out 60db of noise! You may want to balance your overclock/noise levels accordingly…

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